But, “Point taken,” I say. “I do kind of like it. I just wish I could turn it on and off, the way I can change what I’m wearing.”
“Tattoos don’t come with an on-off switch.”
“No, but if you place them strategically, you can make it look like you don’t have any, if that’s how you’re feeling.”
“You are such an interesting girl,” she says. “But come in, come in. I shouldn’t be leaving you to stand in the hall like this.”
Ushering me into the living room, she calls to Maxine to let her know I’m here.
“Maxine told me what you did last night,” she says. “That was very brave of you.”
I try to school my face to stay calm, but I can’t help but give Maxine a look as she’s coming down the hall. I can’t believe Maxine told her about the fairies.
But then Ms. Tattrie adds, “I hope they throw the book at that Calder boy,” and I realize what she’s talking about. “We can hope,” I say, “but I wouldn’t hold my breath.” She nods. “Unfortunately, they do seem to get away with it most of the time, don’t they?”
“Unless someone convinces them to stop.”
Ms. Tattrie regards me for a long moment.
“Yes,” she says. “That was a very dangerous thing you did, but I’m proud of you for doing it, and for helping that girl who, I understand, is anything but a friend.”
Maxine’s mother just gets weirder and weirder. I think she’s actually beginning to like me.
“I’m not planning to make a habit of it,” I tell her. “Getting into that kind of situation, I mean.”
“Sometimes we have no choice,” Ms. Tattrie says, which makes me wonder what kinds of things she’s seen in her life.
“Sometimes the situations are thrust upon us.”
“Yeah, it’s sure not a perfect world,” I agree.
The conversation turns to lighter subjects as Maxine and I sit and talk with her for a little while longer, then finally we get to retreat to Maxine’s room.
“So do you still want to trade in your mom?” I ask when we’re both sitting on the bed.
“I guess not,” Maxine says. “She’s actually starting to seem like a normal mom.”
“Or maybe we’re just getting mature enough to appreciate her perspective.”
“Oh, god, do you think? Are we the ones who are changing?”
I laugh at the look of horror on her face.
“Not likely,” I assure her.
She gets up and beckons me to look at what she’s got on the screen of her computer—another e-mail from that weird woman she met in the fairy-tale forum.
“So you told her everything?” I ask after I’ve read it through.
She nods.
“And you want to tell Christy, too?”
“But not to go in some book. Just to, you know, increase the body of knowledge on the subject. I’d tell him not to use our names.”
“You’re really serious about getting into this stuff, aren’t you?”
“Do you think it’s weird?”
I smile. “Weird is what I like, Maxine.”
“I know. But this is personal stuff—your stuff as well as mine.”
“Let me tell you something,” I say. I stand up so that we’re face to face. “Last night you saved my soul.”
“What?”
“I’m serious. I was ready to just cut those guys. I didn’t see another way to be sure we’d be safe. Maybe it was me talking, maybe it was this vervain overdose your friend wrote about. I don’t know. But I was wrong and you were right. I might have saved our asses, but if I’d done it, I’d ... I don’t know. It would have been crossing a line. I never did it back in Tyson. I never want to do it. But last night I was ready.”
I see Maxine’s eyes filling as I talk, and to tell you the truth, I’m feeling a little teary myself. One more word out of me, and we’d both be bawling. So I just step closer and give her a hug.
She hugs me back in a fierce grip, and then we step back from each other.
“That’s the main reason I wanted to come over,” I tell her. “To say thanks.”
She doesn’t say anything for a long moment. When she does speak, it’s to ask the last thing I expect right now, but it’s entirely appropriate, all things considered.
“Will you tell me about Tyson?” she says.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
So we sit on her bed, and I begin.
There’s one last piece of unfinished business, and Sunday night he shows up: Adrian in all his ghostliness, standing on the fire escape on the other side of my bedroom window. He’s got this apologetic look on his face that makes me smile, because I know just what’s going on in his head. For whatever reason, he needs to talk to me, but having turned back into a ghost Saturday morning, he can’t exactly pick up a phone and give me a call to say he’s coming over. And he knows what happened the last time he just showed up outside my window.
“It’s okay,” I tell him as I open the window. “I know you’re not peeping.”
“You’re still blue.”
“Is that all anybody can focus on?”
“But it’s been what, three days now?”
“Four. Not that I’m counting. And it’s fading.”
He peers at me. “I guess it is ...”
“So what’s up with you?” I say, because I figure it’s well past time to change the subject here.
“I ... can you come with me?” he asks.
“What, right now? It’s almost midnight.”
“I have a favor to ask of you. I know—you don’t owe me anything. It’s just ... I don’t want to do this alone.”
“Do what? Why are you being so weird and mysterious?”
“Can you just come?”
I look out the window past him. The night lies thick on the streets and it’s all shadowy and quiet. Just another Sunday night in Crowsea with everybody already in bed, or nodding off in front of their TV sets. Here and there in the windows of the other buildings I can see that telltale flicker of light.
My gaze comes back to Adrian’s face.
I’ve got school tomorrow—my first day as a blue girl. I still haven’t decided how I’m going to handle the questions and comments that I’m sure to get. Even people who never talk to me are going to want to know what’s up. I’ve gone over it with Maxine and Thomas about a million times today, and Pelly just left me to go back into Closetland a few minutes ago, but none of them had any particularly good suggestions. That leaves me stuck with the bad Halloween dye-job excuse.
So all things considered, I thought a good night’s sleep would be an excellent idea. A chance to rest up and prepare for what’s sure to be a long and tiring day. But Adrian looks so damn hopeful.
“Sure,” I say. “Just let me get dressed.”
He turns so that his back is to the window, but he didn’t have to. I’m just wearing a big T-shirt for a nightie and I’m not taking it off. Still, I appreciate the gesture on his part. I put on a pair of jeans under it, socks, and sneakers. My coat’s in the hall, so I dig out a thick wool sweater with a tight knit that should keep me warm.
“Okay,” I say, and approach the window.
He moves aside so that I don’t have to step right through him, then follows me down the fire escape. “Where to?” I ask when we get to the bottom. “Remember when we first met, I told you there were angels as well as shadows?”
I nod.
“Well, we’re going to go look for one of those angels.”
“How long’s that going to take?” I ask.
I have visions of his expecting me to go tramping through the city with him, all night long, and that’s not going to happen.
“Not long,” he says. “They usually show up pretty quickly when you want to see them badly enough.”
“What do you want to see one for?”
I’m trying to remember what he told me about them, but I’m coming up blank.
/> “I need to know something,” he says. “Did someone tell you how the blue paint would incapacitate the anamithim, or was it something you figured out on your own?”
“The truth?”
“No, tell me a lie.”
“Now you’re just being smart.”
“Maybe I’m picking it up from you.”
I grin. “That’s good. There are two things that’ll get you far in life, so far as I’m concerned: a spunky attitude and a vocabulary of interesting words.”
“I should have met you before I went flying with the fairies.”
“Except I would’ve been eight years old or something, and that would just be gross.”
“I didn’t die that long ago.”
“Whatever.”
“But back to how you dealt with the anamithim ” he says.
We’re a couple of blocks from the apartment now. I wonder what people would see, if there was anyone around to look our way. Adrian would probably be totally invisible to them, so it’d just be this blue girl, walking along with her hands in her pockets, talking to herself. All I need is a shopping cart and I’d have all the makings of a bag lady in training.
“I was flying by the seat of my pants,” I tell him. “Right up until I came into the room where you all were, I was thinking maybe we could use the paint to make a stronger warding circle—just to protect us .You know, something that wouldn’t get scuffed or blown away like salt.”
“So why did you throw it on them?”
“I don’t know. I guess because if they weren’t going to come near me with my blue skin, I just figured throwing it on them would really screw them up.”
“And your backup plan was ...?”
I shake my head. “No backup plan. I tend to run on instinct, which is why I threw out all the earlier plans we had and went with my gut when I thought of the paint.” He gives a slow nod.
“Instinct,” he repeats.
“It’s not going to be everybody’s choice, but it works for me.”
“Even when following it seems crazy, or maybe a little scary?”
“I guess. It would depend on the situation.”
He nods again.
“I’m afraid to die,” he says.
“But you’re—”
“Already dead. I know. So it’s completely weird. Except I’m not completely dead, because I never went on to wherever it is that we go next.”
“You said that when we first met. I don’t really blame you for hanging around—not if you’ve worked a deal where you can put it off. Who wants everything to be over?”
“Except they say that dying’s just the start of another, even more interesting journey.”
“Who does? People who haven’t died yet, that’s who.”
He shakes his head. “No, the angels do.”
And then I remember what he told me about them. “You’re going on,” I say. “You’re going to get them to show you the way.”
“I’m scared to, but I know it’s what I should do. I mean, really, what’s left for me here? All I do is haunt the same stupid school I hated when I was alive.”
“Yeah, but—”
“But I just didn’t want to do it by myself. I know we’re not really friends, but you’re pretty much the closest thing I’ve got. That’s why I asked you to come.”
Which is so sad that I don’t know what to say.
“Do you mind?” he asks.
“No. I guess not. I mean, I’m flattered that you asked.”
“If it’s too freaky, I understand.”
“No,” I say with more certainty. “I can do this for you. And I do think of you as a friend. You pissed me off some, but we’re still talking, right?”
“I should warn you, this is going to get a little weird.”
“Anamithim weird?”
“No. It’s just that when an angel shows up, the world changes a bit. It ... becomes less, you could say. There’s hardly any sound, and everything goes black and white like an old movie.”
“Ho-kay.”
“But it’s not dangerous.”
“Go for it,” I tell him. “I won’t wig out on you.”
He turns into the next alleyway and stops when we’ve walked halfway down it.
“This is where your angel lives?” I have to ask.
“No, it’s just a quiet place, out of the way. I have to call him to me now—I just need to say his name three times. He said he wouldn’t come to me again, no matter how much I called to him, but I’m hoping he will this one last time.”
So he does just that. Calls out this name, “John Narraway,” three times.
Nothing happens.
“Maybe,” he says, “you could call with me?”
“Doing that isn’t going to get me all tangled up in some new fairy-tale weirdness, is it? Because trust me, I’ve learned my lesson.”
“The angels aren’t like that,” he says. “They can’t even harm ghosts like me. All they can do is try to convince us that it’s time for us to go on, and they wouldn’t bother with you, because you’re still alive.”
“Okay. I’ll give it a shot.”
Adrian gives us a count so we can start at the same time, and then we call the angel’s name, “John Narraway,” which is way more prosaic than I would have expected. I’m thinking Gabriel. Now there’s a good angel name. Or maybe Raphael, though wasn’t he also a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle? Jared would know.
We repeat the name. Do it a third time.
I wait a few moments, then turn to Adrian. I’m about to say something like how we gave it a shot, but it looks like the angel’s a no-show and maybe we should just try again some other time, only that’s when it comes creeping up on us.
It’s night, and it’s already quiet, but there’s no mistaking this silence for anything natural. I’m looking at the far end of the alley and as I watch, the yellowy glow of the streetlight loses its color, which is way eerier than you might think it would be, considering everything’s pretty much black and white at night anyway. You don’t realize how much color the night holds until it all goes away.
I turn at the sound of footsteps.
He looks like an ordinary guy, nothing special, except he’s carrying a fiddle case. Almost middle-aged; just a little older than Mom, I’d guess. He has one of those totally nondescript faces that you’d never think about again, once you turn away, but he does have this stern look down really well. He takes one look at me, then turns his attention to Adrian. “Thanks for coming this one last time,” Adrian says. The angel gives a brusque nod. I can tell there’s bad feeling between them, but I don’t want to know about it. I’ve decided to turn a new leaf and totally be the mind-your-own-business girl. At least when it comes to this kind of thing. You know, angels and ghosts and blue girls, oh my. “What is she doing here?” the angel says.
“I asked her to see me off.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I won’t get in the way.”
He looks at me again. “How can you see me? Only the dead can see us.”
Oh, that’s just great.
“I’d better still be alive,” I tell Adrian, “or I’m really going to punch you.” I turn to the angel, and add, “The dead can punch each other, right?”
“This is Imogene,” Adrian says.
The angel nods. “I see. The one who—”
“Sent the anamithim packing,” Adrian finishes for him. Except, from the look on the angel’s face, that’s not what he was about to say.
“But that’s impossible,” the angel says.
“Impossible pretty much sums up Imogene.”
As the angel gives me a considering look, I try to decide if I should take Adrian’s comment as a compliment.
“I see what you mean,” the angel says before I can make up my mind. He returns his attention to Adrian, and adds, “So you’re really ready?”
Adrian nods. “And Imogene can come, right?”
“If she sent a crowd of anamithim packing, how
could I stop her?”
“Hello?” I say. “I’m standing right here. Maybe you could include me in the conversation instead of just talking about me?”
The angel smiles. “Of course. Follow me.”
He sets off back down the alley. Adrian reaches for my hand. I hesitate—I mean, what’s there to hold on to?— except when I put my hand out to his, real fingers curl around mine.
“What’s going on here?” I ask as we fall in step behind the angel. “How come I can feel your hand?”
“This is a borderworld,” the angel says over his shoulder. “Spirits have more substance in a place such as this.”
Weird. But these days, what isn’t?
* * *
It’s a totally disconcerting walk we take. I recognize where we are most of the time, but it’s all black and white, and everything’s silent except for our footsteps and a faint hum like a wind coming from a few streets over. There’s no one else around—I mean, no one. Not a late-night straggler. Not a cab or a police cruiser.
I’m about to ask how much farther we have to go, when we turn a corner and my gaze is pulled to the far end of this new street. I no longer know where we are, and for sure I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s an immense stone archway, rearing twenty or thirty feet high, and between its pillars, the air shimmers like a heat mirage. There are all kinds of colors in that light that you don’t see at first. It seems mostly gold, but then you realize the gold is flecked with every other color you can imagine and some that I don’t even think are supposed to be in the spectrum that can be seen by the human eye. But I can see them right now.
“Wow,” I say.
It just gets more amazing, the closer we get. And here’s a funny thing. When the gate is finally looming right over us, everything that’s touched by the light regains its normal color. There’s sound, too, but now it’s this indescribable low resonating hum that I can feel in my chest, like when a bass guitar’s turned up way loud. Only this is a constant sound, so I feel like I’m vibrating in time with it.
I turn to look at Adrian, but I’m not sure he’s seeing and feeling what I am because he’s got this scared look in his eyes.